This two-volume edition of folk-tales has been created from popular myths once current in Greece, but the stories are not presented in exactly the form in which they have come down to us. Menelaos Stephanides has justifiably added his own graceful touches, pointing out that when researchers eventually came to record in writing what had been essentially an oral tradition, it was by then a pale shadow of the vivid tapestry of tales woven by gifted storytellers of generations past.[...]